Wednesday, 5 July 2017

Brexiteer
and honest aren’t words that I would normally use in combination, but in one
important aspect at least they clearly apply to the newest
member of the UK’s ministerial team handling the Brexit negotiations. In comments he made in 2010, Steve Baker
called not just for Brexit, but for the whole EU to be “wholly torn down”. Labour,
Lib Dem, and even some Tories have piled into the issue claiming that having
someone with such views negotiating on behalf of the UK will be
counter-productive, and one Tory MP said “It
just reveals what the extreme Brexiteers have been about all along. It’s not enough to take the UK out of the EU. They want the entire thing to fall apart”.

Well,
yes. All of that is true, but why is it
such a surprise? Destroying the EU has
always been the intention of most Brexiteers, even if they’ve mostly been
rather more reluctant to say so. Indeed,
it’s the only position which really makes any sense of much of what they have
said. During the referendum, many of
them told us that we could have all the economic benefits without membership,
but never told us exactly how that could be achieved. There is one – and only one – scenario in
which that was ever going to be possible, and that was if the EU reformed
itself into a much looser entity, based almost entirely on economic agreements
and without any of the political elements which were the founding principle
behind the organisation. In short, the
successful Brexit which they promised was predicated on an assumption that Brexit
would result in a sea-change in attitudes in the other 27 countries.

And
it isn’t just among the Little Englander type of Brexiteer that bringing down
the EU makes sense. I’ve noted before
that Welsh independence outside the EU makes less sense to me than full Welsh
membership of the EU, because the existence of the EU redefines the meaning of
independence in a European context. But
take away the EU, and revert to a position where independence is again redefined
as meaning the status of a country which is a member of a much looser trading
arrangement, and an independent Wales once again looks like the normal state of
any European country rather than something rather exceptional. For independentista
Brexiteers, destroying the EU is also the logical conclusion of their position.

In
fairness to Mr Baker and his ilk, bringing down the EU is a coherent and
consistent world view; the problem is that it shows so little understanding of
the drivers which led the original 6 members to create the EEC. Not all the more recent recruits to the EU
wholly share that original vision of a different type of Europe, but that
vision remains much more powerful in the seats of government of Europe than the
Brexiteers have ever understood. Instead
of weakening the bonds tying the other 27 together, Brexit has succeeded in
strengthening them – and getting rid of what has probably been the most awkward
and disruptive member state may well turn out to be the biggest British
contribution to European unity in history.

It
would be an unintentional contribution, of course. The UK’s position has always been ‘divide and
rule’, and we’ve already seen elements of that in the UK’s attempts to split
individual members of the EU off into separate negotiations and discussions –
with talk even of aid in exchange for support in some case. The strategy hasn’t changed at all; it’s just
that, in this case, it has the potential for backfiring spectacularly.

The
reaction of those who disagree with his position was predictable, but I’m not
at all convinced that it will make any difference at all to the position of the
other 27 countries in dealing with the UK.
I’m sure that they’ve realised all along that the only logical context
for Brexit was the collapse of the EU – they’re as capable of interpreting the
demands for all the benefits with none of the limitations or obligations as I
am – and will already have assumed that to be one of the UK Government’s
aims. Insofar as it makes any difference
to anything, the domestic context is the more important. A more open statement of the real aims of the
Brexiteers can only assist sensible debate within the UK.